Wargaming prepared to "tolerate" Xbox Live restrictions

Free-to-play specialist Wargaming is delighted to be moving to Xbox – although it’s having to bite its tongue in the process.

Wargaming's CEO Victor Kislyi has confessed that he’s uneasy about certain elements of Microsoft’s ecosystem but says that he’ll just have to “tolerate” it.

"With Microsoft, unfortunately it's not 100 per cent free-to-play because it requires the Gold subscription to Xbox Live membership," Kislyi told Games Industry. "But that's a Microsoft requirement which is valid for us and for Activision and for EA and all other partners.

“They cannot drop it for us because they would have to drop it for everyone and it would be a total mess for them. This we have to tolerate, which I am not happy about. I would rather add another 30-40 million non-golden members and they will monetise occasionally.”

Kislyi also has reservations about the payment restrictions employed by Xbox 360, although he hopes to play a part in expending the current system.

"Microsoft announced for Xbox One – thank God – they are moving to real currency,” he added. “We will teach – excuse me – we will advise them on how to embrace, sometime in the future, different payment methods like SMS. Right now, it's only credit cards used to buy Microsoft Points which we know is suicide in free-to-play.

"Everybody knows Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are traditional console companies which are huge in their own merit. They have lots of divisions, lots of departments, lots of regulations. We respect that, and whining and complaining about that structure does not help.

"We're now working hard with Microsoft's people as a team to build this and to break a couple of rules inside Microsoft."

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